New Tools, New Value.
This essay explores the manner in which music production software, by granting to users the capacity to experience music in ways they cannot on their own, undermines the modern form of subjectivity known as individuality. It critiques Jacques Attali's prognostication of a network of musical composit...
| Published in: | Music, Sound & the Moving Image Vol. 9; no. 2; pp. 207 - 219 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Essay |
| Published: |
Liverpool University Press / Journals
Autumn2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=112419814&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 112419814 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 17530768 3DEN jtl: Music, Sound & the Moving Image issn: 17530768 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Autumn2015 vid: 9 iid: 2 pid: 39786 pub: Liverpool University Press / Journals artinfo: ui: 112419814 10.3828/msmi.2015.14 ppf: 207 ppct: 12 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 752KB tig: atl: New Tools, New Value. aug: au: ROBERTSON, BENJAMIN J. su: Music software Musical composition Attali, Jacques Musical form Mashups (Internet) sug: subj: Music software Musical composition Attali, Jacques Musical form Mashups (Internet) ab: This essay explores the manner in which music production software, by granting to users the capacity to experience music in ways they cannot on their own, undermines the modern form of subjectivity known as individuality. It critiques Jacques Attali's prognostication of a network of musical composition, under which musicians produce for themselves according to their own codes and outside the codes established by established by a particular historical configuration of power; draws on examples of contemporary musical forms, namely the mashup; and discusses the manner in which Audacity and similar software allows users to 'see music'. Thus I demonstrate that the new tools of musical production instantiate what Jonathan Sterne calls 'perceptual technics', by which the human body becomes incorporated into the process of valorisation by virtue of an ability it lacks. Such incorporation draws our attention to the manner in which traditional Marxist understandings of the relationship of the human to the machine--assumptions which Attali shares--are no longer valid. Attali's postmodern understanding was a powerful means by which to critique modern forms of power and subjectivity, but under postmodern conditions, when the individual becomes a 'dividual', new critical tools and concepts are needed to address a valorisation irreducible to a labour understood as discreet from the tools it 'uses'. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Essay src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Music, Sound & the Moving Image is published by Liverpool University Press, and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without Liverpool University Press's express written copyright permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Music, Sound & the Moving Image holder: Liverpool University Press / Journals dt: @attributes: year: 2015 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|